If you’ve found yourself in a bar, any bar, in the Highlands or St. Matthews recently you’ve probably run into Petar Mandic. He’s usually the good looking guy with the big smile, funny accent, acoustic guitar, and a charmingly humble demeanor – playing cover songs in the corner of the bar.
The accent comes from being born in Slovenia and raised in Serbia, Petar was a Serbian Junior National Tennis Champion which brought him to America on scholarship to University of Iowa. He graduated with business finance degree and took a job in the corporate world. But the corporate world wasn’t for him so he left it behind to follow his dream of music – which is where he find him most nights working his way through set after set of old and new bar room classics.
He moves nightly from place to place, covering songs from artists as varied as Otis Redding to Jason Mraz, or Bill Withers and Old Crow Medicine Show.
But other people’s music is not where Petar plans to stay. Recently, he released his debut album filled entirely catchy originals penned by Petar, the album is called: Someday Mine. With songs “I Will Change My Way,” “Tough to Handle,” and “Cute Little Lady,” the album meanders its way through the lows of heartbreak and the peaks of optimism like a lazy Sunday morning in bed.
“Blues is something that can grab the soul time and time again, so someone like B.B. King,” Petar tells me of the artists that inspire his own music. “Then there are classical artists like Mozart or a Beetoven. A deep lyricist like Randy Travis, who takes things that are said so many times over and over again, and yet does it in such a simple, yet full of meaning and substance kind of a way.”
Petar is all over town every night of the week, do yourself a favor, check with him on facebook or his website (petarmandic.com) and check out when he’s going to be at your favorite bar next.
(Album photo by Ellie Thomas)
